Intergrated lesson

1.

INTERGRATED LESSON
A.P. CHEKHOV – O. HENRY

2. THEY HAVE VERY MUCH IN COMMON

A.P.Chekhov
Born on 17 of January 1860 in
Тaganrog , Russia.
He went to a medical school in
Moscow and later became a doctor.
By 1886, he had become famous
as a writer of plays e.g. THE
SEAGULL (1896) and his brilliant
short story THE STEPPE.
Chekhov was a very fast writer who
could produce a story in under an
hour!
A typical Chekhov ‘s story is about
the thoughts and emotions of the
characters.
W.S. Porter
Born on the11 of September, 1862
in Greensboro, North Carolina.
He was licensed as a pharmacist
and worked at a drugstore.
In 1896 he wrote CABBAGES AND
KINGS, the most famous of his
works.
O. Henry wrote 381 short stories (a
story a week).
O. Henry’s stories have their
surprise endings, they are playful
and optimistic.

3. O. Henry

was the pen name of the American writer William
Sydney Porter

4. Early life

William Sidney Porter was born on
September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North
Carolina. His middle name at birth was
Sidney; he changed the spelling to Sydney
in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon
Sidney Porter (1825–1888), a physician,
and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter
(1833–1865). They were married April 20,
1858. When William was three, his mother
died from tuberculosis, and he and his
father moved into the home of his paternal
grandmother. As a child, Porter was
always reading, everything from classics to
dime novels; his favorite work was One
Thousand and One Nights. Porter
graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria
Porter's elementary school in 1876. He
then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High
School. His aunt continued to tutor him
until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started
working in his uncle's drugstore and in
1881, at the age of nineteen, he was
licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore,
he also showed off his natural artistic
talents by sketching the townsfolk.

5. Moving toTexas

Porter traveled with Dr. James K. Hall to Texas in March 1882, hoping that a
change of air would help alleviate a persistent cough he had developed. He took up
residence on the sheep ranch of Richard Hall, James' son, in La Salle County and
helped out as a shepherd, ranch hand, cook and baby-sitter. While on the ranch, he learned
bits of Spanish and German from the mix of immigrant ranch hands. He also spent time
reading classic literature. Porter's health did improve and he traveled with Richard to
Austin in 1884, where he decided to remain and was welcomed into the home of the
Harrells, who were friends of Richard's. Porter took a number of different jobs over the
next several years, first as pharmacist then as a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He
also began writing as a sideline.

6. Flight and return

Porter's father-in-law posted bail to
keep Porter out of jail, but the day
before Porter was due to stand trial on
July 7, 1896, he fled, first to New
Orleans and later to Honduras.
While holed up in a Tegucigalpa hotel
for several months, he wrote Cabbages
and Kings, in which he coined the term
"banana republic" to describe the
country, subsequently used to describe
almost any small, unstable tropical
nation in Latin America. Porter had
sent Athol and Margaret back to
Austin to live with Athol's parents.
Unfortunately, Athol became too ill to
meet Porter in Honduras as Porter
planned. When he learned that his wife
was dying, Porter returned to Austin
in February 1897 and surrendered to the
court, pending an appeal. Once again,
Porter's father-in-law posted bail so
Porter could stay with Athol and
Margaret.

7. Later life

Porter's most prolific writing period started in 1902, when he moved to New York
City to be near his publishers. While there, he wrote 381 short stories. He wrote a
story a week for over a year for the New York World Sunday Magazine. His wit,
characterization and plot twists were adored by his readers, but often panned by critics.
Porter married again in 1907, to childhood sweetheart Sarah (Sallie) Lindsey
Coleman, whom he met again after revisiting his native state of North Carolina.
However, despite the success of his short stories being published in magazines and
collections (or perhaps because of the attendant pressure that success brought), Porter
drank heavily. His health began to deteriorate in 1908, which affected his writing.
Sarah left him in 1909, and Porter died on June 5, 1910, of cirrhosis of the liver,
complications of diabetes and an enlarged heart. After funeral services in New York
City, he was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina. His
daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried with her father.

8. Stories

O. Henry's stories are famous for their surprise endings,
to the point that such an ending is often referred to as an
"O. Henry ending." He was called the American
answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote
twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more
playful and optimistic. His stories are also well known
for witty narration. Most of O. Henry's stories are set
in his own time, the early years of the 20th century.
Many take place in New York City, and deal for the
most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen,
waitresses. Fundamentally a product of his time, O.
Henry's work provides one of the best English examples
of catching the entire flavor of an age. Whether roaming
the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the "gentle
grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and wealth
in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry had an
inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and
describing it with an incredible economy and grace of
language. Some of his best and least-known work resides
in the collection Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories
which each explore some individual aspect of life in a
paralytically sleepy Central American town while each
advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back
one to another in a complex structure which slowly
explicates its own background even as it painstakingly
erects a town which is one of the most detailed literary
creations of the period.

9. Most famous stories

"The Gift of the Magi" about a
young couple who are short of money
but desperately want to buy each
other Christmas gifts. Unbeknownst
to Jim, Della sells her most valuable
possession, her beautiful hair, in
order to buy a platinum fob chain for
Jim's watch; while unbeknownst to
Della, Jim sells his own most
valuable possession, his watch, to buy
jeweled combs for Della's hair. The
essential premise of this story has
been copied, re-worked, parodied, and
otherwise re-told countless times in
the century since it was written.
"The Ransom of Red Chief", in
which two men kidnap a boy of ten.
The boy turns out to be so bratty and
obnoxious that the desperate men
ultimately pay the boy's father $250
to take him back.

10. Pen name

Porter gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name. In 1909 he
gave an interview to The New York Times, in which he gave an account of it:
It was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O.
Henry. I said to a friend: "I'm going to send out some stuff. I don't know if it
amounts to much, so I want to get a literary alias. Help me pick out a good
one." He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a name from the first
list of notables that we found in it. In the society columns we found the
account of a fashionable ball. "Here we have our notables," said he. We
looked down the list and my eye lighted on the name Henry, "That'll do for a
last name," said I. "Now for a first name. I want something short. None of
your three-syllable names for me." "Why don’t you use a plain initial letter,
then?" asked my friend. "Good," said I, "O is about the easiest letter written,
and O it is."
A newspaper once wrote and asked me what the O stands for. I replied, "O
stands for Olivier the French for Oliver." And several of my stories
accordingly appeared in that paper under the name Olivier Henry.

11. Legacy

The O. Henry Award is a prestigious annual prize given to outstanding short stories,
and named after Porter. Several schools around the country bear Porter's pseudonym.
In 1952, a film featuring five stories, called O. Henry's Full House, was made. The
episode garnering the most critical acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem", starring
Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe. The other stories are "The Clarion Call",
"The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief" (starring Fred Allen and Oscar
Levant), and "The Gift of the Magi".

12. We will show you the performance of one his short stories

Are you ready?

13. Witches’ loaves

Cast:
Sorokina Tatyana – miss Martha Meacham
Muravyov Vyacheslav - Blumberger
Baranenkov Kirill – Blumberger’s friend
Martinova Julia –the author